Based on the terrible truths of Jonestown, Jim Jones's utopian commune in Guyana, Children of Paradise is a beautifully imagined novel that interweaves history and fiction to portray a mother and daughter's escape from the rule of a religious madman.Joyce and her young daughter, Trina, have followed a charismatic preacher from California to the wilds of Guyana, where a thousand congregants have cleared a swath of dense jungle and built a utopian society based on a rigid order guarded over by armed men and teenage "prefects." Each day ends with sermons that demonstrate the preacher's capricious violence and his utmost hostility toward even a whisper of skepticism. But try as the preacher may to block out the world, the commune's seclusion is being breached, first by tribal elders complaining of polluted river water downstream, then by an invisible presence that has helped a young boy to disappear, and finally with rumors of the imminent arrival of a congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission.As the camp begins rehearsing an endgame of mass suicide, Joyce and Trina attempt a daring escape, aided by a local boat captain and the most unlikely of prisoners—the extraordinary Adam, the commune's caged gorilla.Told with a sweeping perspective in lush prose, shimmering with magic, and devastating in its clarity, Children of Paradise is a brilliant and evocative exploration of the liberating power of storytelling.

From the bestselling, Man Booker–short-listed author of The Sisters Brothers comes a brilliant and boisterous novel that reimagines the folk taleA love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, Undermajordomo Minor is Patrick deWitt's long-awaited follow-up to the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Sisters Brothers.Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux.While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which being the whereabouts of the castle's master, Baron Von Aux. He also encounters the colorful people of the local village—thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty for whose love he must compete with the exceptionally handsome soldier Adolphus. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of humanity is laid bare for our hero to observe.Undermajordomo Minor is an adventure, a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behavior, but above all it is a love story—and Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.

A woman known only as A lives in an unnamed American city with her roommate, B, and boyfriend, C, who wants her to join him on a reality dating show called That's My Partner! A eats mostly popsicles and oranges, watches endless amounts of television, often just for the commercials— particularly the recurring cartoon escapades of Kandy Kat, the mascot for an entirely chemical dessert—and models herself on a standard of beauty that exists only in such advertising. She fixates on the fifteen minutes of fame a local celebrity named Michael has earned after buying up a Wally's Supermarket's entire, and increasingly ample, supply of veal.Meanwhile, B is attempting to make herself a twin of A, who in turn hungers for something to give meaning to her life, something aside from C's pornography addiction. Maybe something like what's gotten into her neighbors across the street, the family who's begun "ghosting" themselves beneath white sheets and whose garage door features a strange scrawl of graffiti: he who sits next to me, may we eat as one.An intelligent and madly entertaining novel reminiscent of The Crying of Lot 49, White Noise, and City of Glass, Alexandra Kleeman's unforgettable debut is a missing-person mystery told from the point of view of the missing person; an American horror story that concerns sex and friendship, consumption and appetite, faith and transformation, real food and reality television; and, above all, a wholly singular vision of modern womanhood by a frightening, "stunning" (Conjunctions), and often very funny voice of a new generation.

A raw and tenderly funny look at the human-cat relationship, from one of our most treasured, iconic writersFelines touched a vulnerable spot in the unfathomable soul of Charles Bukowski, the Dirty Old Man of American letters. For the writer, there was something majestic and elemental about these inscrutable creatures, whose searing gaze could penetrate deep into our beings. Bukowski considered cats to be unique forces of nature, elusive emissaries of beauty and love.On Cats offers Bukowski's musings on these beloved animals and their toughness and resiliency. He honors them as fighters, hunters, survivors who command awe and respect as they grip tightly onto the world around them: "A cat is only ITSELF, representative of the strong forces of life that won't let go."Funny and moving, Bukowski's On Cats brings together the acclaimed writer's reflections on these animals he so admired. Bukowski's cats are fierce and demanding—he captures them stalking their prey; crawling across his typewritten pages; waking him up with claws across the face. But they are also affectionate and giving, sources of inspiration and gentle, insistent care.Poignant yet free of treacle, On Cats is an illuminating portrait of this one-of-a-kind artist and his unique view of the world, witnessed through his relationship with the animals he considered among his most profound teachers.

"That's when I saw him—the cowboy—across the smoky room."I'll never forget that night. It was like a romance novel, an old Broadway musical, and a John Wayne western rolled into one. Out for a quick drink with friends, I wasn't looking to meet anyone, let alone a tall, rugged cowboy who lived on a cattle ranch miles away from my cultured, corporate hometown. But before I knew it, I'd been struck with a lightning bolt . . . and I was completely powerless to stop it.Read along as I recount the rip-roaring details of my unlikely romance with a chaps-wearing cowboy, from the early days of our courtship (complete with cows, horses, prairie fire, and passion) all the way through the first year of our marriage, which would be filled with more challenge and strife—and manure—than I ever could have expected. This isn't just my love story; it's a universal tale of passion, romance, and all-encompassing love that sweeps us off our feet. It's the story of a cowboy.And Wranglers.And chaps.And the girl who fell in love with them.

The Long Season by James P. Brosnan has de*ive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

World War I was a bloodletting so vast and unprecedented that for a generation it was known simply as the Great War. Casualty lists reached unimagined proportions as the same ground -- places like Ypres and the Somme -- was fought over again and again. Other major bloody battles remain vivid in memory to this day: Gallipoli and the Battle of Jutland are but two examples. Europe was at war with itself, and the effect on Western civilization was profound, its repercussions felt even today.World War I saw the introduction of modern technology into the military arena: The tank, airplane, machine gun, submarine, and -- most lethal of all -- poison gas, all received their first widespread use. Professor Stokesbury analyzes these technological innovations and the war's complex military campaigns in lucid detail. At the same time he discusses the great political events that unfolded during the war, such as the Russian Revolution and the end of the Hapsburg dynasty, putting the social and political side of the war into the context of modern European history.A Short History of World War I is the first history of this war to be written in twenty years. It incorporates recent research and current thinking about the war in a highly readable and lively style.

Sometimes I've taken home the trophy, sometimes I've stumbled or tripped over my own feet. But every move I've made has shaped me into the person I am today.Season after season, millions of fans tune into Dancing with the Stars to watch Derek Hough, the talented, consummate competitor whose skill and commitment have made him the show's all-time champion. Whether he's dancing with an Olympic gold medalist, an internationally renowned recording star, or a celebrated actress, Derek has an undeniable talent for bringing out the best in his partners. He does more than just tutor them in the fox-trot and paso doble he teaches them how to see beyond their limits and realize their true potential.Now, for the first time ever, Derek opens up about his transformation from bullied little boy to accomplished performer and coach who lets nothing and no one stand in his way. In Taking the Lead he details how his experiences have taught him to embrace a positive outlook, channel his creativity and drive, and face his fears head-on.From his early training in London beginning at the age of twelve, to grueling dance competitions around the world, to never-before-told stories from behind the scenes of Dancing with the Stars, Derek writes with honesty and insight about his extraordinary journey. And in sharing his own story, he shows all of us how we can take charge of pursuing our goals, overcome obstacles, and become winners not just on the dance floor but in life.

Garden & Gun magazine's aptly named Good Dog column—which features true stories of canines and the humans who love them—is one of the publication's most popular features. Now editor in chief David DiBenedetto and the editors of Garden & Gun have gathered their favorite essays as well as original pieces to create this must-read collection of dog ownership, companionship, and kinship. By turns humorous, inspirational, and poignant, Good Dog offers beautifully crafted essays from such notable writers as P. J. O'Rourke, Jon Meacham, Julia Reed, and Roy BlountJr. From the troublemakers who can't be fenced in to the lifelong companions who never leave our sides, this one-of-a-kind anthology showcases man's best friend through all of his most endearing (and maddening) attributes.

The 1990s saw a shock wave of dynamic new directing talent that took the Hollywood studio system by storm. At the forefront of that movement were six innovative and daring directors whose films pushed the boundaries of moviemaking and announced to the world that something exciting was happening in Hollywood. Sharon Waxman, editor and chief of The Wrap.com and for Hollywood reporter for the New York Times spent the decade covering these young filmmakers, and in Rebels on the Backlot she weaves together the lives and careers of Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction; Steven Soderbergh, Traffic; David Fincher, Fight Club; Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights; David O. Russell, Three Kings; and Spike Jonze, Being John Malkovich.

When it comes to evolution, we've all heard about fossils and fruit flies, Darwin and Dawkins. But the idea of evolution is far more profound and far-reaching. Today, a movement of visionary scientists, philosophers, and spiritual thinkers is forging a new understanding of evolution that honors science, reframes culture, and radically updates spirituality. Carter Phipps calls them Evolutionaries. His groundbreaking book provides the first popular guide to these exciting minds who are illuminating the secrets of our past and expanding the vistas of our future.

A New York Times BestsellerFrom Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist and leading Alzheimer's advocate Meryl Comer comes a profoundly intimate and unfl inching account of her husband's battle with Alzheimer's disease, one of today's most pressing and least-understood health epidemics.When Meryl Comer's husband, Dr. Harvey Gralnick, chief of hematology and oncology at the National Institutes of Health, began forgetting routine things and demonstrating abrupt changes in behavior, doctors were confounded as to what was wrong. Diagnoses ranged from stress and depression to Lyme disease, from pernicious anemia to mad cow's disease supposedly acquired from a trip to London. Finally, after years of inconclusive tests, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, a seemingly impossible disease for a man in his prime.Comer gave up her television career and for the next two decades cared for Harvey in their home, tending to his every need while watching him regress into an emotionally distant and sometimes violent stranger. The man I live with is not the man I fell in love with and married,she writes. He has slowly been robbed of what we all take for granted the ability to navigate the mundane activities of daily living: bathing, shaving, dressing, feeding, and using the bathroom. His inner clock is confused and can't be reset. His eyes are vacant and unaware. In Slow Dancing with a Stranger, Comer brings readers face-to-face with Alzheimer's, detailing the realities, its stressful emotional and fi nancial hardships for families, as well as the limitations of doctors and assisted living and long term care facilities to manage diffi cult patient behaviors. With candor and grace, Comer chronicles her personal experiences her mistakes, her heartbreaks, her minor victories to paint an intimate and moving portrait of Alzheimer's and, in the process, she reveals the truth about the disease and everyone it affects.One hundred percent of the proceeds from Slow Dancing with a Stranger will support Alzheimer's research.

For over two thousand years, unicorns have inspired, enchanted, and eluded humanity. The beast appears in Old Testament texts and Greek and Roman natural histories; Christians adopted it as a symbol of Christ, the Middle Ages as a symbol of courtly love. There was a brisk trade in unicorn parts in medieval and Renaissance times, and travelers regularly reported sightings into the modern era. But by the early twentieth century the real-life contenders for the beast had been ruled out, and scientists concluded that the unicorn never existed. It turns out they were a little hasty.Where did the unicorn come from, and how was it accepted as a part of the animal kingdom for so longChris Lavers argues that although the unicorn of our imagination isn't real, traces of its character can be found in existing species. In this lively and vivid exploration of the natural world, Lavers follows the beast's trail to the plateaus of India and into the jungles of Africa to unearth the flesh and blood ancestors of our iconic unicorn.Along the way, Lavers introduces the peoples, historians, explorers, traders, and scientists who believed in the unicorn, and describes their efforts to pin it down. Its changing status from one-horned ass to religious symbol to pure myth reflects man's journey from superstition to scientific understanding, ultimately leading to a greater insight into the natural world.

Khaliah Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali, shares her success at overcoming obesity through banding surgery—a minimally invasive, reversible, and extremely effective choice for drastically overweight peopleWhen Muhammad Ali's daughter Khaliah hit 325 pounds, she didn't need to be told again that she was morbidly obese. A lifetime of dieting, of starving, had not helped. Miserable, depressed, and unable to walk up a flight of stairs without losing her breath, she did not know which way to turn—until a friend pointed her toward a new type of surgery called gastric banding. It is just as effective as gastric bypass but with a fraction of potential complications. With the band placed around her stomach and completely taking away her hunger, Khaliah slimmed down to half her former size. Khaliah wraps her story of weight loss in this memoir of what it was like to grow up the daughter of one of the world's most famous men, and teams up with her surgeons at the New York University Medical Center to detail the lifetime of misery suffered by an obese girl; the ins and outs of the banding operation; and the joy, serenity, and health resulting from a solution that until now had eluded her.

Meet Tom Ripple, a man with an uncommon outlook on his common life. Through the vividness of his voice and his growing sense of the sorrow and absurdity of the world, Tom Ripple becomes an unusually appealing antihero, aware of his ordinariness and the limits of his intelligence, with a ribald sense of humor, and a clumsiness in his attempts at emotional connection with others. He is a bewildered everyman navigating his way through modern times. By turns poignant, funny, heartbreaking, and profound, It's All Right Now is a towering achievement and a singular work of the imagination.

Over 140 practical recipes to help you make sense of your data with ease and build production-ready data apps About This Book Analyze Big Data sets, create attractive visualizations, and manipulate and process various data types Packed with rich recipes to help you learn and explore amazing algorithms for statistics and machine learning Authored by Ivan Idris, expert in python programming and proud author of eight highly reviewed books Who This Book Is For This book teaches Python data analysis at an intermediate level with the goal of transforming you from journeyman to master. Basic Python and data analysis skills and affinity are assumed. What You Will Learn Set up reproducible data analysis Clean and transform data Apply advanced statistical analysis Create attractive data visualizations Web scrape and work with databases, Hadoop, and Spark Analyze images and time series data Mine text and analyze social networks Use machine learning and evaluate the results Take advantage of parallelism and concurrency In Detail Data analysis is a rapidly evolving field and Python is a multi-paradigm programming language suitable for object-oriented application development and functional design patterns. As Python offers a range of tools and libraries for all purposes, it has slowly evolved as the primary language for data science, including topics on: data analysis, visualization, and machine learning. Python Data Analysis Cookbook focuses on reproducibility and creating production-ready systems. You will start with recipes that set the foundation for data analysis with libraries such as matplotlib, NumPy, and pandas. You will learn to create visualizations by choosing color maps and palettes then dive into statistical data analysis using distribution algorithms and correlations. You’ll then help you find your way around different data and numerical problems, get to grips with Spark and HDFS, and then set up migration *s for web mining. In this book, you will dive deeper into recipes on spectral analysis, smoothing, and bootstrapping methods. Moving on, you will learn to rank stocks and check market efficiency, then work with metrics and clusters. You will achieve parallelism to improve system performance by using multiple threads and speeding up your code. By the end of the book, you will be capable of handling various data analysis techniques in Python and devising solutions for problem scenarios. Style and Approach The book is written in “cookbook” style striving for high realism in data analysis. Through the recipe-based format, you can read each recipe separately as required and immediately apply the knowledge gained.

This book is intended for software developers who want to use parallel programming techniques to write powerful and efficient code. After reading this book, you will be able to master the basics and the advanced features of parallel computing. The Python programming language is easy to use and allows nonexperts to deal with and easily understand the topics exposed in this book.

Design RPA solutions to perform a wide range of transactional tasks with minimal cost and maximum ROI About This Book ? A beginner's guide to learn Robotic Process Automation and its impact on the modern world ? Design, test, and perform enterprise automation task with UiPath ? Create Automation apps and deploy them to all the computers in your department. Who This Book Is For If you would like to pursue a career in Robotic Process Automation or improve the efficiency of your businesses by automating common tasks, then this book is perfect for you. Prior programming knowledge of either Visual Basic or C# will be useful. What You Will Learn ? Understand Robotic Process Automation technology ? Learn UiPath programming techniques to deploy robot configurations ? Explore various data extraction techniques ? Learn about integrations with various popular applications such as SAP and MS Office ? Debug a programmed robot including logging and exception handling ? Maintain code version and source control ? Deploy and control Bots with UiPath Orchestrator In Detail Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enables automating business processes using software robots. Software robots interpret, trigger responses, and communicate with other systems just like humans do. Robotic processes and intelligent automation tools can help businesses improve the effectiveness of services faster and at a lower cost than current methods. This book is the perfect start to your automation journey, with a special focus on one of the most popular RPA tools: UiPath. Learning Robotic Process Automation takes you on a journey from understanding the basics of RPA to advanced implementation techniques. You will become oriented in the UiPath interface and learn about its workflow. Once you are familiar with the environment, we will get hands-on with automating different applications such as Excel, SAP, Windows and web applications, screen and web scraping, working with user events, as well as understanding exceptions and debugging. By the end of the book, you'll not only be able to build your first software bot, but also you'll wire it to perform various automation tasks with the help of best practices for bot deployment. Style and approach This book will help you kick-start your automation journey with a special focus on one of the most popular RPA tools: UiPath.

Enhance your Kotlin programming skills by building 3 real-world applications About This Book ? Build three full-fledged, engaging applications from scratch and learn to deploy them ? Enhance your app development and programming activities with Kotlin’s powerful and intuitive tools and utilities. ? Experience the gentle learning curve, expressiveness, and intuitiveness of Kotlin, as you develop your own applications Who This Book Is For This book is for those who are new to Kotlin or are familiar with the basics, having dabbled with Java until now. Basic programming knowledge is mandatory. What You Will Learn ? Learn the building blocks of the Kotlin programming language ? Develop powerful RESTful microservices for Android applications ? Create reactive Android applications efficiently ? Implement an MVC architecture pattern and dependency management using Kotlin ? Centralize, transform, and stash data with Logstash ? Secure applications using Spring Security ? Deploy Kotlin microservices to AWS and Android applications to the Play Store In Detail Kotlin greatly reduces the verbosity of source code. With Google having announced their support for Kotlin as a first-class language for writing Android apps, now's the time learn how to create apps from scratch with Kotlin Kotlin Programming By Example takes you through the building blocks of Kotlin, such as functions and classes. You’ll explore various features of Kotlin by building three applications of varying complexity. For a quick start to Android development, we look at building a classic game, Tetris, and elaborate on object-oriented programming in Kotlin. Our next application will be a messenger app, a level up in terms of complexity. Before moving onto the third app, we take a look at data persistent methods, helping us learn about the storage and retrieval of useful applications. Our final app is a place reviewer: a web application that will make use of the Google Maps API and Place Picker. By the end of this book, you will have gained experience of of creating and deploying Android applications using Kotlin. Style and approach Here we will build three exciting projects in Kotlin which will demonstrate how to effectively use Kotlin language constructs

IT service management automation at your fingertips About This Book ? Learn to leverage ServiceNow’s capabilities for improved IT automation by following step-by-step, practical instructions ? Build core administration, development, and maintenance skills with IT service management in ServiceNow ? Improve your workflow efficiency by designing and creating responsive and automated workflows, business logic, and front-end automation Who This Book Is For This book is for IT professionals and administrators who are planning to or are already trying to implement ServiceNow in their organization for Enterprise IT service management tasks. Some familiarity with web technologies (JavaScript) would be helpful. Prior ServiceNow experience is not necessary. What You Will Learn ? Read and write clear, effective code for the ServiceNow platform ? Identify and avoid common pitfalls and missteps that could seriously impact future progress and upgradeability ? Use debugging tools to troubleshoot when things go wrong ? Discover tips and tricks from top ServiceNow developers, architects, and administrators. Find out what the pros wish they knew when they were starting out In Detail This book is an updated version of Learning ServiceNow, that will cover the new and updated features of the ServiceNow platform. It will show you how to put important ServiceNow features to work in the real world, while introducing key concepts via examples of managing and automating IT services. It'll help you build a solid foundation of knowledge, and will demonstrate how to effectively implement and configure modules within ServiceNow. We'll show you how to configure and administer your instance, and then move on to building strong user interfaces and creating powerful workflows. We also cover other key elements of ServiceNow, such as notifications, security, reporting, and custom development. You will learn how to improve and automate your business' workflow and processes. By the end of this book, you will be able to successfully configure and manage ServiceNow like a pro. Style and approach This book is a step-by-step practical tutorial to help you quickly deploy and configure ServiceNow in your organization. It guides you through the process of building applications and understanding the underlying systems, to help you become a more effective ServiceNow/ITSM administrator and/or developer.

Bring realism to your games by mastering post-processing effects and advanced shading techniques in Unity 2018 About This Book ? Learn the secrets of creating AAA quality shaders without writing long algorithms ? Master shader programming through easy-to-follow examples ? Create stunning visual effects that can be used in 3D games Who This Book Is For Unity Shaders and Effects Cookbook is for developers who want to create their first shaders in Unity 2018 or wish to take their game to a whole new level by adding professional post-processing effects. A solid understanding of Unity is required to get the most from this book. What You Will Learn ? Understand physically based rendering to fit the aesthetic of your game ? Write shaders from scratch in ShaderLab and HLSL/Cg ? Combine shader programming with interactive scripts to add life to your materials ? Design efficient shaders for mobile platforms without sacrificing their realism ? Use state-of-the-art techniques, such as volumetric explosions and fur shading ? Master the math and algorithms behind the most used lighting models ? Understand how shader models have evolved and how you can create your own In Detail Since their introduction to Unity, shaders have been seen as notoriously difficult to understand and implement in games. Complex mathematics has always stood in the way of creating your own shaders and attaining the level of realism you crave. Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook changes that by giving you a recipe-based guide to creating shaders using Unity. It will show you everything you need to know about vectors, how lighting is constructed with them, and how textures are used to create complex effects without the heavy math. This book starts by teaching you how to use shaders without writing code with the post-processing stack. Then, you’ll learn how to write shaders from scratch, build up essential lighting, and finish by creating stunning screen effects just like those in high-quality 3D and mobile games. You'll discover techniques, such as normal mapping, image-based lighting, and animating your models inside a shader. We'll explore how to use physically based rendering to treat light the way it behaves in the real world. At the end, we’ll even look at Unity 2018’s new Shader Graph system. With this book, what seems like a dark art today will be second nature by tomorrow. Style and approach The recipes in this book contain step-by-step instructions, complemented with screenshots, code, and real-world examples.